To take away the right of a child's imagination will delay the development of right and wrong in a child's mind.

First the basics;

Imagination is a crucial step in the development of a child's brain.To take away the imagination in the school yard will prevent our children from one of the first steps in the development of critical thinking. Denied this natural development, a child's brain will only forge them into a drone-like mental status without creativity. Zero Tolerance and its fear of punishment will follow them all of their days placing our children in danger of growing into an automaton like life-style with no desire to create or invent.

Learning right from wrong;

When a little boy is playing "Cops and Robbers" he wants the cops to win, the natural outcome is the bad guy loses. Would you rather wait for the time when a child will learn their morals from games like Grand Theft Auto? Thoughts and actions concerning toy guns and why they are in existence should be discussed instead of being labeled intolerable.

Most children are born with a desire to please but right and wrong can be a learned trait.In a child's mind to be summarily punished without rhyme or reason is not a teaching moment. Instead it leaves the child questioning all and denies the student the interaction with an educator who can properly give guidance.

For a child to be denied interaction with an educator who can guide the youth, is not just immoral it is near criminal . It leaves the child unsupervised to create his or her own sense of good and bad. Keep in mind the result of what an unsupervised game of Grand Theft Auto teaches! It is far preferable to have a child guided in the right direction rather than to be punished and shunned without explanation, or worse, for no good reasoning at all.

Schools are all together losing their effectiveness in teaching critical thinking. By punishing the imagination rather than bringing up the questions like, WHY do you have a image of a gun? A teachable moment is forever lost. In the past teachers used to observe the children as they played, this gave the teacher an insight to the child's mental state. If the child had the robber winning all the time it was far better to recognize the irrational thought pattern and confront it with the parents.Thus a teaching moment for positive growth was initiated and more often than not may have averted a problem, or even a catastrophe later in life.

A violent video game will not make a good example but a teacher can!With the culture of "Zero Tolerance" the child loses and teachers are no longer educators but have become institutional guards.Without what should have been the interaction of a positive role model a child is left to his or her own to determine right from wrong.

Of course we can keep the status quo and continue on the "Common Core" path of education and develop a society of a worker drone proletariat with an elite ruling class. That or you can provide lessons that could be learned and will develop the next generation of FREE thinkers and doers. Right now it is up to you the law makers, at least until the next election!